THE MINI-OLYMPICS WARM-UP!!!

In the lead up to the St. Theresa's Mini-Olympics students were asked to visit their 'country' to learn some facts and experience them. Patrick's classroom was transformed into Jamaica and the Jamaican Olympians were introduced to each other. We started off by investigating our flag, food and land. Then we looked at a couple of our most famous athletes. We finished off with an attempt to break the world record in the 200m race.

It was so much fun. The Mini-Olympics are going to be so much fun. Go Jamaica!

CLINKER ME THIS!!!

Our next chance experiment was chocolate-based. We used Clinkers to explore probability.

Patrick asked us to guess which colour our Clinker was, draw ourselves on a posted note and to get ready for the most exciting bite in our lives. When we bit into the chocolaty goodness we had to look at the colour and place our posted note in the correct spot.

We then used some of our probability words to describe our results. Overall, it was a fun, yummy and educational lesson.

I'M COMING HOME!!!

For Literacy, we have been reading the 'crayon' books and writing various pieces of work. This week we have been drafting and publishing our own postcards to Duncan (the crayon's owner.) We had to pretend to be a crayon who he had left somewhere in the world. We had to think of a good reason explaining why he left us, but it had to relate to the picture that we found. It was a great activity and we thought of fantastic reasons.

Great work 2/3P!

Standby for photos of our fully finished work.

P.S. Helen came back into the classroom to see our finished work. She was delighted with our finished and nearly-finished products.

RUN, FOREST, RUN!!!

2/3P have been inspired by the Rio Olympics. We participated in a classroom race. However it wasn't a running rice, it was a dice rolling race. We had a race with 12 runners, two dice and the hopes and dreams of all of the 2/3P students. The game rules were:

- roll the two dice and add the numbers together

- the runner whose number that was moves a step closer to the finish line.

It was a great race, with a few runners clearly winning. After the race we investigated the likelihood of some runners winning. We found out that the game was unfair because some runners had more of a chance of winning. For one runner, the race was over before it started. It was impossible for him to win.

What a game!

WHAT IS FAIR?

In Maths we have been investigating chance and probability. We started the topic by experiencing 'fairness' and 'unfairness' Patrick asked us to play a game. He put us into two teams and our job was to get the beanbags into our team's hula hoop. BUT one of the teams had to have their arms inside of their jumpers. The game was completely unfair. WE played it a couple of times and talked about each teams chances of getting the most bean bags and therefore winning.

It was a great way to introduce fairness, chance and probability!

WHAT MAKES A GOOD LEARNER?

This morning Patrick asked us the question, 'What makes a good learner?' We didn't really know, so Patrick asked us to get into pairs, put our brains together and think as hard as we could. Once we had a few ideas, Patrick asked us to type our groups ideas onto a Google Doc. We looked at everyone's ideas and made a list of the things we think a good learner does.

Now we understand what it takes to be an even better learner than we are now!

HELEN RETURNS!!!

This week we were lucky enough to have Helen come into the classroom and teach us about Writing. We have been looking at the stories 'The Day The Crayons Quit' and 'The Day The Crayons Came Home.' Our first task was to pretend that we were a crayon and write a letter to Duncan (who is our owner) explaining why he should use us more often. Patrick and Helen dressed up as black crayon and red crayon to help us with some ideas. It was really funny. 

The next task we had to pretend that we were a crayon that Duncan left behind somewhere. We had to write Duncan a letter explaining that we are coming home. The letters are fanstastic!